I’ve been thinking about sex.

Substitute any other subject in the foregoing sentence and you elicit a calmer response. Thinking about death, taxes, purpose, government, love, shopping, eating? –  good for you, those topics are fair game. Mention sex or any of its aliases or appurtenances and eyes widen, Where’s he going with this? Why has he raised this topic? Only humans, purportedly the smartest species, find this most predictable and necessary of functions startling and troubling. Each day headlines sluice about sexual predators, denouncers and offenders (often the same person), souls unsure their anatomies and psyches align. Witness evolution at work: are we evolving in a hale direction?

While a big fan of sex, I share the perturbation. While normal enough in this department (I think), the concept opens a trap door in consciousness, leaving me momentarily nonplussed. Cats, elephants, and squirrels may shrug, What’s the big deal?, but for humans, at least since the dawn of literacy, no deal’s been bigger. Why?

When Darwin stumbled on the idea of evolution two hundred years ago, his optimistic hour proclaimed it beneficent. So what that God didn’t create creation in seven days, He devised a system of continuous improvement chugging toward His masterpiece MAN (and sidekick, Woman). Less sanguine today, we’re less convinced of mankind’s perfection. We’ve achieved a lot of wonders, no question, but a lot of vile stuff too, and we seem, on a bad day at least, to be sliding in the wrong direction. On the sex front, for sure, our collective mind’s a humiliating mess. What gives?

My parents implanted sex in the citadel of my insecurity by never mentioning it. Never. You may not know it by looking, but I was conceived by parthenogenesis, me and Jesus. My genitals were lexically shrunk to a wee-wee, as if by a trick of phrase they could be made to vanish. I was fourteen – sic! – when my father, red as a cranberry, sat me down for “the talk.” “Is there anything you’d like to know, son, about the birds and the bees?” he commenced with difficulty. His smart son, concluding his father had neither ornithology nor entomology on his mind, replied mercifully, “I’m fine, Dad, thanks.”

I blame our craziness about sex on thought and its byproduct, language. During a few hundred thousand years, we thought our way into complex social structures to survive and thrive. We invented family units, law, division of labor to coordinate for our mutual benefit. With words, we began to differentiate ourselves: Franny Hominid was different from Esther Hominid next door, notwithstanding similarities. Sex undermined the social cohesion our success depended on. Franny’s hubby took a shine to Esther and all hell broke loose. An early purpose of law was to regulate sexual relations (see, the tenth commandment). As hierarchies ramified, different ranks developed different sexual practices and mores. Titillation and mystification supplied delicious entertainment. Men enfeebled females to enforce their authority.

Each imposition of definitions made us crazier. And it won’t stop. Not until thinking stops. For thinking is progressive. We can’t help redefining, subdividing, complicating, convoluting. Consider the impossible acronym, LGBTQIA, new in our lifetime. Each initial represents a subdivision unknown or unmentionable to our parents. Each entails its own complications and anguish. With more to come – and more.

Are we – on this topic, as so many others – thinking ourselves into knots: bewilderment, separation, misunderstanding, antagonisms? Has human intelligence exceeded its ability to cope with the consequences of its ingenuity? Have we become too smart for our own good?

I’m in favor of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Also of the activity.